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Wednesday, August 11, 2010

MusicMan Month: Benji Madden Signature Model Guitar

Benji Madden? You are kidding, right? Good Charlotte was a flash in the pan band, and Benji was more famous for who he dated than for his music. But hey, he got a signature axe.

And it is not too bad, either. In 2004 MusicMan produced these guitars, which are a variant of their Silhouette model. The biggest difference was in the electronics, as this was the only MusicMan guitar made with a single humbucker pickup (DiMarzio, in this case).

Other than that, feature-wise these are pretty standard-issue guitars. They have Schaller locking tuners, and string through the body standard bridges. They have the cool trussrod wheel that makes set-ups a breeze, as well as the 5-bolt neck joint.

The bodies on these are alder, and they were available in textured black, white and Madden Green. You could only get maple fretboards on white and green guitars, and rosewood on the black ones. There was an upcharge for the glossy finishes. They also all have the hokey (or cool, depending on how you look at it) brass knuckle inlay at the 12th fret.

They were a bit on the spendy side, though, and did not sell too well. The list price on these was $1599 (with a glossy finish), and the street price was $1199. I picked this one up new for half of that.

It played well and was light (maybe 6 ½ pounds), but it lacked lower end, and eventually moved on to the afterlife of crap that I used to own.

What is Benji doing now? The last I heard he was scheduled for a boxing match against Riki Rachtman. Seriously.